Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I will be presenting a paperSome questionable web construction approaches and practiceat WASET Singapore 2010

2010-08-12: I wrote the following about WASET in a correspondence:

WASET's management is a huge problem. WASET may have some good ideas, but their web sites and management styles are ineffective and easily raise suspicions about their competence and credibility. Some examples:

Registration should be done online with a credit card. The current practice of requiring wiring money must be abolished.

Final conference program should not be published as a PDF file. Such practice is ineffective and does not engender professional respect.

I searched Google for WASET Singapore 2010 and could scarcely find any information. It appears that the original web pages that announced and attracted me to WASET August 2010 International Conference on Electrical, Computer, Electronic & Communication Engineering mega conferences in Singapore have been taken off line. To promote the conference, more information about the conference should be available, instead of less or none. If WASET is not promoting the conference in which I am presenting a paper, then I feel I should. Thus, this update.

2010-08-03: An update:
I took this entry off line after I finally received a response from WASET on 2010-07-29, as follows:

I was not impressed with the conference program. But it changed my mind about not registering because it appeared to show some real people presenting papers. I am a University of San Diego professor. I submitted a paper to WASET August 2010 Singapore conference because I will be in Asia at that time. I had invested a significant amount of time with WASET after I made a decision to submit paper to it, and made my paper conform to its required layout, format and style. If I had made a mistake, let me bite the bullet.

As a prerequisite to register online, I needed to wire 450 Euros to an account in Dubai, United Arab Emirate. This felt more like paying a ransom than paying for a conference. Why couldn't WASET accept a credit card, like anyone else? Worse, my bank charged me $35 for the international wiring.

Interesting, yet most unpleasant things began to happen after I wired the 450 Euros. Here is a summary

In this message, Brojack, Secretariat assured me that I had finally registered. But her/his next message asked me to try http://www.waset.org/author.php again, even though I complained repeatedly that this registration page always failed with the same error message.

Finally, I wrote B. Brojack, Secretariat of WASET, for either straightening out my registration impasse, or else refunding my 450 Euros. No response!

To summarize, I wired 450 Euros to an account in Dubai, UAE to pay for the registration fee for a WASET conference in Singapore. I was instructed to register for the conference online at http://www.waset.org/author.php, which always failed. I wrote WASET to request for help. They ignored me. I asked for refund, they also ignored.

I wired 450 Euros to Dubai for a WASET conference in Singapore in August 2010. I was able to register and upload my paper, and it appeared listed in the Conference program. I did not attend the conference, but after the conference WASET sent me a small printed book with a few papers, including mine. That's where the problems started. The book lists papers on pages 923 to 1074 of Volume 69. However, Volume 69 on-line covers from page 1 to page 795. Where are the remaining papers?

I sent many emails asking that question. No response. I talked to one of the members of the International Scientific Committee, listed on the front of the book, but she says she had had no contacts with Waset for many years. Was my paper published? Or where is my money?

Dear Sir,Recently, i received call from WASET to present my paper. the registration amount is 450 euro. Today i released updated pdf. on that my name was missed. previsouly i was present. I dont know about WASET. the phone contacts usually not attended by the organisers. Shall i apply or not. need urgent reply.

Hi everybody, my paper was also selected to present in WASET confence in Amsterdam in July 2011, but Im really suspicious about the validuty and academic value of this conferences. Im suppossed to present my paper at the "International Conference in Sustainble Design and Construction", and none of the other 250 speakers will talk about this subject!! This is really strange, I have attended to many international conferences and this one is the most strange massive conference program I had ever seen...Should I pay this 450 Euros for this??

WASET is not a professional conference. It is a money making business. I ave attended their conference but you do not find many peple there. They expect only the registration fees. You must have noticed that generally no one get review. All the paper get accepted.

It is good for student those who can not write good paper and need for university record, then this conference is ok.

Some extra information, I recently attended a WASET conference. They were also terrible at responding to emails and this meant I had to delay booking flights until I knew what was going on, so it became personally more expensive. However while the conference was useful, particularly from a networking point of view, they need to employ some extra admin staff (e.g. honors or masters students). I am not sure if I will go to another one as it is all a bit chaotic and for the rego fee price one expects better administration.

I went to a WASET conference and it was a complete joke. There were virtually no people there in my field, and the talks were completely unrelated to each other. Basically each person got up and spoke about their work to a completely unrelated audience. For example, the person before me talked about boat design, I talked about quantum mechanics, and the person after talked about Halal meat! There was absolutely no point in going, save for the collaborations which I was going to do anyway. I would say that it is a money making operation, but it is not a scam precisely since real people actually are there and they present their talks. But of no professional value at all.

Hello all, I have been to WASET conference twice. It was "ok" organized, but main thing is that YOUR ARTICLE IS NOT INDEXED where they promise!!! You can only find it at google, thats all. No Scopus etc.

If you have free 450Euro for publication of your article on google, go for it. Otherwise, save the money for something better indexed. This has nothing from the promises on website.

The conference is a complete scam. I know I have been on several hiring committees and if we see someone list a paper published at WASET on their CV we immediately stop evaluating their application. It shows the person can not get published at real conferences so they need to pay to publish their work.

Dear all. Thanks for the information. Thanks God, I haven't paid for register yet. I am really confused about the organizers of this conference. I have traced through Google to know more about Waset, but I can not find clear information. I found the name of the president of Waset, but when I traced I can not find who the Prof. is.I have to decide not to attend that conference.

Attended a WASET conference in 2011, met some very useful contacts and some big names (sports medicine) were there, but the organisation of the actual conference was poor. I was disappointed that the biggest name on the line-up had one of his students primarily present in his place and he took some part, but only by video link up. They were very apologetic about their poor response to calls and emails (which cost me a great deal of money as I was overseas on global roaming charges). The key was it was useful for me, but the poor response to calls or emails make me tempted to go again each year, but not until I hear they have sorted it out from an administration point of view.

In 2012 I organised an international conference entitled 'Agriculture in an Urbanizing Society' (see http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Research-Results/Projects-and-programmes/Agriculture-urbanizing-society.htm). We had approximately 350 participants sharing research findings in 18 parallel working groups at that conference (seehttps://www.box.com/s/7251b7d8b15482818700 for working groups and papers). Our list of working group titles has just been copied and pasted for a WASET conference (15-16 May 2013 in Amsterdam, although the venue is not even in Amsterdam, but a small hotel in a small town 25 km east of Amsterdam) about Agriculture, Food and Urbanizing Society (seehttp://www.waset.org/conferences/2013/amsterdam/icafus/cfp.php). If you look at the list of 2013 WASET conferences (http://www.waset.org/conferences1.php) and you scroll down a bit, then you see several Amsterdam conferences scheduled for 15-16 May on very different topics (e.g. Agriculture, Biotechnology, Electronics, Biomedical engineering, et cetera). Same diverse lists of topics can be found for conferences in for instance Berlin (May 22-23 2013), Tokyo (May 30-31), New York (June 5-6), etc... So yes, it seems quite obvious that this is a scam.

Hello Everyone, Well, I have just returned from WASET conference in Rio de Janeiro 2013, March.Like in this old saying ONE HAVE TO PAY FOR MISTAKES. It looks like I have just did. Never been suspicious about this organization that looks professional in the web site although had some questions concerning technical aspects... but what I found during meeting was too much and suddenly I realized this organization is just about to take your money... Some of above comments are also my experience: changing meeting hotel in last few weeks, conference room was organized for very small audience, I doubt about scientific titles of gentleman being conference chairman what is crucial for professionalism too, accidental selection of papers and audience (one interesting talk about chemistry chains, the next one about Baltic sea seals problems.....), consequentially publication indexation, etc.My comment is directed to all potential scientists who may not pay enough attention to these matters before investing your time and money in. Hope my experience is not only a waste and will help someone to avoid problems.Finally what comes to my mind is a little malice: instead of WASET they should be called WASTE ;-(

I don't believe real researchers can be fooled by this to the point of wiring money, unless they want to go on a vacation paid for by their employer. All conferences last two days, have steep registration fees, no invited speakers, and are in nice places for tourism. I looked at a couple of conferences in my field and the committee was entirely composed by unheard-of people from third rate institutions, mostly unrelated to the field.

Title: A Predatory Librarian: Jeffrey Beall: The crook, the felon, the criminal of the Academic Community.

I recently made an inquiry to Jeffrey Beall (the Denver, USA librarian who runs a webpage where he slanders and insults about 500 publishing houses), whether he, Jeffrey Beall himself, has the ability to solve the simple math equation 5x+3 = 0.

Jeffrey Beall replied to my first email, that he has never studied even the simplest form of Math. Meaning that he doesn’t know what “equation” means (he has never even seen equations like 5x+3 = 0, 3x*x + 7x -4 =0 etc), neither does he know what “Derivative” or “Integral” mean.

Jeffrey Beall told me that he has a Bachelor in Spanish and English language. This of course didn’t stop him blacklisting hundreds of houses that publish Math, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Space Science etc Journals. That from a man who isn’t even able to solve the simple equation 5x+3 = 0, and who doesn’t know what Derivative or Integral mean.

Recently, Jeffrey Beall included in his “black list” an old, big Academic Publishing House, with several, historic Journals in Math, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics (some of which have been indexed in ISI and SCOPUS), and that because, according to Jeffrey Beal, they had copied the… Maxwell Equations from a 2007 article.

Obviously, since Jeffrey Beall doesn’t know how to solve the equation 5x+3 = 0, and since he doesn’t know what Derivative and Integral mean, he has zero knowledge when it comes to Electricity or Physics and has never seen the Maxwell Equations (not even in their most basic form).

As expected from somebody who is entirely clueless regarding even elementary Math and Physics, he considered the Maxwell Equations found in the Journal to be plagiarized… from a 2007 paper.

With a Bachelor in Spanish and English in his CV, Jeffrey Beall passes judgment even to Medicine, Biology, Chemistry etc Journals and articles, while he is fully aware that he’s never attended a University course on which nucleotides make up the DNA molecule, he’s never heard what enzyme, catalysis, proteins etc are, and if one asks him what pH is, he’ll be completely ignorant.

However, in his bizarre blog, this person has declared himself a critic of everyone and everything. He blacklists publishing houses (many of which having journals and conferences indexed in ISI, SCOPUS, Compendex, ACM etc), he includes stand-alone journals in “black lists”, slanders Editors-in-Chief, Authors etc. Of course he does all that selectively, following a certain logic of his, which will be analyzed below.In a later email that I sent him, I asked him to comment on why he includes a small publishing house in his black list because “they copied Maxwell’s Equations from a 2007 paper” (poor Jeffrey Beall doesn’t know that Maxwell’s Equations are taught in Universities’ first year elementary physics), while at the same time he excludes IEEE, who have over 85 SCIgen machine-generated fake conference papers published and indexed.

(See: A 2013 scientometrics paper demonstrated that at least 85 SCIgen machine-generated papers have been published by IEEE. The Paper has been published in Springer Verlag: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-012-0781-yDownload the full paper from:http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/71/35/55/PDF/0-FakeDetectionSci-Perso.pdf)He also didn’t respond to the question why he didn’t include Elsevier in his black list, who were revealed to have been publishing 6 Medical Journals between 2000 and 2005 with fake articles and studies, that were funded by pharmaceutical companies, in order to scientifically prove that their products were superior to their competitors’. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevierorhttp://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/elsevier-confirms-6-fake-journals-more.html

In a third email I asked him where his moral and academic responsibility stands, since if due to him including some publishing houses in black lists, those houses reduce or cease their activity (due to his immoral slandering), hundreds of jobs will be lost and families will end up in the street. Naturally, despite my repeated emails, Jeffrey Beall never replied.

There are also rumors on the internet that some publishing houses, like Hindawi and Elsevier, pay Jeffrey Beall on a yearly basis in order not to be included in his black list. This looks like heavy taxing that the publisher is asked to pay annually to Jeffrey Beall, and, as we’ll see below, part of this tax ends up in the Denver University funds.

Actually, Hindawi was in Jeffrey Beall’s black list a year ago. Then, after negotiations, Jeffrey Beall placed them in a watching list (i.e. an “under observation” list), and eventually completely removed them.

Just like Jeffrey Beall himself mentioned in his blog, Hindawi’s people visited him in Denver and offered him “explanations”. After that, Jeffrey Beall gradually removed Hindawi from his black list.Why, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, did you agree to meet with Hindawi’s representatives in your office in Denver, when Hindawi was black listed? What did you talk about, Mr. Jeffrey Beall? Hindawi, as mentioned on their website, has an annual turnover of $6 million.

Couldn’t they use part of that money to pay off Jeffrey Beall?

Furthermore, in his blog, Jeffrey Beall has posted a photo of Hindawi’s headquarters, which he calls “House of Spam”. So, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, why isn’t Hindawi in your black list, when among your fundamental black listing reasons, like you mention in your blog, is spam?

Having read all that, you can draw your own conclusions on who Jeffrey Beall is and what his real motives behind his publishing house and scientific organization black listing blog are. Houses and Organizations that Jeffrey Beall calls “Predatory Publishers”.

Maybe it’s time to talk about Predatory Librarians, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. About librarians who target Open Access Journals, especially because the open, online PDF policy deprives librarians (like Jeffrey Beall) from the possibility of receiving kickbacks from publishing houses.

To those who are not aware, it is known that several publishing houses paid- and pay-off librarians (like Jeffrey Beall), in order to get their libraries to subscribe to those houses.

Meaning that, in order for a certain University, Research Center, Company to buy some books or subscribe to some journals, it is common knowledge that librarians receive money under the table from the respective publishing houses. It is therefore natural and understandable for this kind of librarians (Jeffrey Beall, for instance) to fight Open Access Journals and Open Access Publishing Houses, since theya) lose their kickbacks,b) lose their power and influence in the library, as well as the University.

I’ve saved all my email exchange with Jeffrey Beall, along with their headers/source code, and I will soon upload them to various websites. I need everyone’s help though, by sending me emails (to the email address found at the bottom) and exchanging information on Jeffrey Beall’s scandalous behavior.

And one last question to Jeffrey Beall: How can a librarian WITHOUT a Ph.D. be an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?

Could it be that Jeffrey Beall bribed older professors, using the abundance of money that he is said to possess?

Could it be that Jeffrey Beall threatened that if they don’t vote for him, he’ll include all journals where they have papers published in his black list, and slander them on the internet?

Or is it that they were so much impressed by his research? Actually, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, what is your scientific research? Your scientific research as a “real scientist” that is, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. What publications do you have, besides slandering, insulting and discredit hundreds of scientific organizations and publishing houses? What do you teach at the University of Denver Mr. Jeffrey Beall?

Is there really any course (real scientific course) that you can teach, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, besides calling publishing houses and scientific organizations “predatory”?

It doesn’t look like it, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. No matter how hard we looked, we didn’t find any courses taught by you at the University of Denver.

Neither on your personal webpage, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, nor on your money-making blog, nor even on the University of Denver website is there any mention about courses taught by you.

So, since you do absolutely no scientific research, and you don’t even teach pre-graduate or post-graduate students, what is your role at the University of Denver, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?

Does the University of Denver pay you a salary, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, or do you pay the University to let you bear the title of Assistant Professor?

A title that you really do not deserve, as you have no Ph.D., no actual research work and do no teaching whatsoever. It is a shame for the University of Denver to have professors like you, Jeffrey Beall.

Or is running a blog that slanders everyone and everything considered scientific research?

It most certainly is not, Mr. Jeffrey Beall.

Could it be, however, an applied money-making project for you and your university, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?

(By the way, why should a small publishing house from some place in India, which cannot attract papers, nor editorial board members, from western universities, be in your black list Mr. Jeffrey Beall? In this case, you should also black list all non-US and non-European universities. Of course there exist first-rate universities, like Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge. Should all other universities be in a black list? Is this your logic “Professor” Beall? Furthermore, you condemn any new publishing house, as it is natural for them to not have papers and not be indexed as soon as they launch, but has to deal with you, who, like a vulture, immediately includes them in your black list for those reasons.)

I would greatly appreciate your response, Mr. Jeffrey Beal. And I would also appreciate feedback from anyone who agrees with me. My email is: profnicolabellomo@gmail.com

My name is Petre Dini and I am the President of IARIA, www.iaria.orgI am also victim of Jeffrey Beall Actually, this pseudo-scholar Jeffrey Beall is a thug. He uses black lists to create profit. Also he is involved in tax evation and money laundry.I asked him several times to remove IARIA from his black list and he promised me to re-analyze the site www.iaria.orgThere is not any real reason to have our institute IARIA in his pseudo-list.The cost to re-analyze the portal of my organization www.iaria.org was 100,000 USD,Exactly "re-analyze" was the verb that he used in our phone conversation. Why re-analyze? Who is he that analyzes or re-analyzes Academic organizations?What are his qualifications. I am professor in Electrical Engineering with many publications (in IARIA and outside IARIA). Who is this pseudo-professor - money hungry thug?

Anyway, Jeffrey Beall gave us two accounts in Tax Heaven Countries: One account in a Bank of St. Vincent and another account in Belize.We do not pay 100,000 USD for IARIA and so IARIA is still now in his list.

I estimate that Hindawi has paid to pseudo-professor Jeffrey Beall something like 1500000 (1 million and half) $

Somebody must report Jeffrey Beall' activities in American Authorities.

Anybody can kill him.

If somebody kills him, he will absolve the Humanity from this monster.

Speak. Speak. The President of IARIA spoke. He refused to suborn Jeffrey Beall.In several places of the Web you can find Petre Dini's letter reporting the tragic truth for Jeffrey Beall.......Congratulations Prof. Petre Dini. Do not worry about IARIA. Everybody knows that Jeffrey Beall list is calumnious and untruth.....

Hello, thank you very much for your blog. In fact a month or so ago I submitted my paper to http://waset.org/conference/2014/05/montreal/ICSREE without really looking at the conference in details, it appeared to me to be serious gathering researchers of my domain. A month later i got the letter of acceptance oral presentation as well as inclusion in the conference proceedings. That is when I started to look at the conference, and realized since January 2007 more than 17000 papers have been published --> a big question mark concerning the reviewing process. The only review I got from them was to correct the format, I mean not even one comment or remark concerning the material of my text. I haven't payed anything yet and do not plan to do so, however what do you think I should do, since they have a copy of my paper and don't want it to appear in their proceeding ?

I am a PhD student and, unfortunately, my collegue and I have been victim of this fake conference. We were looking for a conference about vaccines and vaccination and we decided to join the ICVV 2014 in Rome, the "International Conference of Vaccines and Vaccination" organized by Waset. When the congress program was available (only less than one week before the conference) we noticed that the list of abstracts and posters did not reflect the topics we were interested in and that were promoted in the flyer on Waset website. We tried many times to ask an explanation but, obviously, they didn't answered (the only way to contact them is by mail). After that we looked up for other conferences organized by Waset in the same period and city. What we noticed was that there were many conferences with different names and topics planned on the same day and at the same place of the ours.Unfortunately, we have wasted money that we would have wanted to put in our education.

I'm a first year PhD student and I was looking for conferences to publish my work. I found WASET website and submitted my abstract around 4pm and next morning I got a letter of acceptance without any single comment or correction about the abstract so here is when my suspicions started. After a simply googled "WASET" I found several comments and blogs reporting them as a scam and not a single comment from the organizers defending their work.I certainly won't be paying anything and I don't plan to attend the conference either.

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I don't know how i could be so naive... i uploaded an abstract three days ago and now i wanted to take it back. It's simply not possible. I'm very afraid to be indexed in some Journal or even Google.´Is there something i can do about it?

WASET is a scam, I am PhD student and fell into their fraud activities. I submitted a good paper to their conferences and they accepted in a few days. I withdrew it upon realizing it's a scam conference. However, they went ahead and published it in one of their journals without my consent. Now they are refusing to remove it from their journal. How has an idea how to resolve this problem of withdrawing the paper now that they already published it? Be warned of WASET fake conferences.

Hi .. I was so fool .. A phd girl recommended me this conference and i payd but then i cancelled it because it was too shady ... Dont know if i go since i asked permission to my boss ..dont know what ti do

I have a question regarding those whose papers were published by WASET without their permission... Did this happen before of after you pay them? Thank you very very much! I submitted a good paper to them but I haven't paid the registration fee yet!